The invention relates to the making of filter cigarettes, cigars or cigarillos (hereinafter simply called filter cigarettes) wherein rod-shaped mouthpieces containing fibrous filter material (such as cellulose acetate fibers) are joined end-to-end with rod-shaped components containing natural, reconstituted and/or artificial tobacco. More particularly, the invention relates to improvements in the making of filter cigarettes which are obtained by subdividing groups of aligned rod-shaped components including at least one filter rod section of unit length between two plain cigarettes, namely by severing the filter rod sections of successive groups midway between their ends to form pairs of filter cigarettes wherein the mouthpieces have exposed end faces likely to carry fragments of comminuted fibers which have a tendency to become separated from the respective mouthpieces and to contaminate the surrounding area. Such tendency exists in spite of partial bonding of neighboring fibers to each other by resorting to suitable plasticizers. Reference may be had, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 3,974,007 granted Aug. 10, 1976 to Heinz Greve for "Method and apparatus for the production of filter rod sections or the like". The disclosure of this patent is incorporated herein by reference.
The atmosphere surrounding a filter cigarette making machine (e.g., a production line known as PROTOS 2 which is produced and distributed by the assignee of the present application) contains considerable quantities of fragmentized tobacco particles which can be gathered and reintroduced into cigarette making machines. This is not advisable if such atmosphere further contains fragments of fibrous filter material for tobacco smoke. Moreover, fragments of fibrous filter material at the end faces of filter mouthpieces forming pare of filter cigarettes detract from the appearance of such smokers' products. Still further, such fragments are likely to become separated from the filter mouthpieces during transport of filter cigarettes to and during manipulation in packing machines. Such undesirable uncontrolled separation of fibers and/or fragments of fibers is likely to occur irrespective of the exact nature of the fibrous material, i.e., not only if the filter mouthpieces contain cellulose acetate fibers.